Corbett seeks reversal of all sanctions against Penn State

Well, Gov. Tom Corbett didn’t pull any punches at his press conference from the Nittany Lion Inn this morning.

He’s not seeking the reversal of bits and pieces of the sanctions levied by the NCAA last July 23. He’s looking for all of them to be revoked.

With the anti-trust suit that will be filed by the commonwealth of Pennsylvania against the NCAA later today, Corbett said the state will ask a federal court to throw out the severe sanctions and declare the consent decree signed by Penn State president Rodney Erickson illegal.

“Just as we stand up every day and fight for the victims,” Corbett told a packed conference room at the Nittany Lion Inn, “we should stand up every day and fight for the university.”

During the conference, Corbett threw some haymakers at the NCAA, alleging president Mark Emmert and company “piled on” the sanctions when Penn State was at its weakest point publicly. He accused them of levying sanctions for their own personal benefits. He called their sanctions “overreaching and unlawful.” He charged that the NCAA didn’t play by its own rules in handing out the punishment.

He also jabbed the Freeh Report, saying that while the state doesn’t refute its findings, it is “an incomplete report.”

And so, the governor who drew so much scorn from the Penn State community over the last six months echoed their exact sentiments on Wednesday.

I’m going to be writing much more on this in the coming days, obviously. But there are two very distinct ways to look at all of this:

1.) There’s no debating it: Corbett is not a popular governor, there’s a new Attorney General (the Clarks Summit area’s own Kathleen Kane) taking over in two weeks, and if he was ever going to try to win back the Penn State vote with re-election looming, he was running out of time. This reeks — reeks — of being a politically motivated move. Everything Corbett said Wednesday is everything Penn State fans and frustrated alumni have wanted to hear. Which might be exactly what he wants (although he strongly denied that notion during the press conference).

2.) There’s also no debating that Corbett and the state seem to have a really good case. The NCAA has a history of overstepping its bounds on matters of punishment, and I think this could be the ultimate example of that. The Freeh Report is, as Corbett alleged, an incomplete report by definition, because none of the key players were interviewed, and nobody outside of Sandusky has gone to trial. The NCAA based historic sanctions on an incomplete report. It’s very conceivable that a federal court can hear this case and rule in Penn State’s favor.

So, we move on into 2013 with Penn State becoming an even bigger story.

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